


Light Like Melted Butter

by SolarMorrigan



Series: Drink Wine, Spew Poetry [2]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: 007 Fest, Drinking, Established Relationship, M/M, Prompt Fill, questionable metaphors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-16
Updated: 2019-07-16
Packaged: 2020-06-29 17:43:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19835338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SolarMorrigan/pseuds/SolarMorrigan
Summary: Sometimes Bond goes missing. This is fine, and nothing to worry about. Q getting a bit really drunk has nothing to do with it, because he is not worried one bit.He's not.





	Light Like Melted Butter

**Author's Note:**

> Day 16! This one fills "Sneaker" on the [Random Prompt Table](https://mi6cafe.wordpress.com/007-fest/007-fest-2019-prompt-tables/) (I say trainer throughout instead of sneaker because sneaker didn't feel right but I think it still counts because they're the same thing? I hope??) and Anon Prompt 18 on the [MI6 Cafe Prompt Exchange](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1LwtIoqppLgPC3D0bJ5HF7ZcIJEnNgGmQcm21977FGJc/edit#gid=628702862): Use this sentence in the fic, everything else it up to you: "In that light, his eyes shone blue like a pair of rare blue lobsters in the middle of his face."
> 
> As soon as I saw it, I knew I needed to use the line in a followup to _Your Lovely Blue Diamond Eyes_ and so here it is

James is missing.

Not really _missing_ missing, exactly, but the sort of missing that usually happens when he’s on mission. It’s really nothing to worry about.

Really, it’s not.

Maybe the circumstances surrounding the time when he’d gone dark hadn’t been ideal—involving a lot of shouting and gunfire and one cut-off “Q”—but that’s no reason to get worked up about it.

James is their resident kudzu: fast-moving, impossible to kill, and partial to warm climates. Not all of those facts are presently relevant, but Q stands by it.

Anyway, Q is busily not being at all worried when they kick him out of Q branch, which is ridiculous, because it’s not as though he hasn’t spent 24 hour stretches there before. He’s not even still there looking for James; he trusts James to make his way home, even if it has been days… or almost a week…

Well, he might be running a search in the background, but he’s doing other work. Keeping busy is what he’s doing.

Tanner says he understands, but kicks Q out anyway and tells him to get a couple of days’ rest.

There’s nothing to do after that but get drunk about it.

“Bastard always comes back,” Q says, laying his head on Eve’s shoulder. “He is the cat that came back. He comes in on little cat feet. He is the fog.”

“Mhm,” Eve hums and reaches up to pat Q’s head a bit harder than she normally would have because she’s about as drunk as he is at this point.

So, very.

She’d come over to check on Q when he’d already gotten into the wine and had declared she would need a drink if she was going to listen to Q mope. Q had figured that was fair enough, and had passed over the merlot.

Now they’re both sitting on the couch, cuddled together – or at least Q is sort of cuddled into Eve, because he does that when he gets drunk enough and Eve hadn’t protested. Usually it’s James Q hangs onto, but he’s not going to think about that right now.

“You don’t need to worry. He always comes home,” Eve says, completely riding over Q’s protest that he _isn’t_ worried. “But you know, I’ve been wondering.”

Q tilts his head up so he’s looking at the underside of Eve’s chin and figures it’s about as close to eye contact as he’s going to get at the moment. “Wondering what?”

“How did Bond get to calling your place “home”, anyway? One day I’m dropping files off at his sad bachelor flat and the next he’s complaining about how there’s not enough room in your closet for his suits and that your cats hate him.” Eve waves a hand at Steve, Q’s large ginger tabby who is dozing on the floor nearby.

“Steve and Doughnut love James,” Q defends; there may have been the odd hairball incident, and Q still maintains that Doughnut had just gotten carried away with his kneading and didn’t _mean_ to scratch James’ shoulder up, but on the whole, they got on quite well.

More or less.

“Not the point.” Eve bapped Q in the chest with the back of her hand. “Really, I thought the two of you would be on each other’s nerves, living together.”

“Sometimes.” Q tries to shrug, but just ends up sort of tipping himself back against the sofa for a moment. “I asked him when he’d just come back from assignment.

“It was late, and we were in my office and it was just the desk light on, you know how it makes everything… buttery? Like it’s all covered in warm butter. And in that light, his eyes shone like a pair of rare blue lobsters in the middle of his face. It struck me that I just wanted to be with him as much as possible, so I asked him to move in.”

Eve nods, drunkenly pensive. “True love,” she begins sagely, “is when you realize they have hot buttered lobsters for eyes and you want to be with them anyway.”

“Exactly,” Q agrees, though he’s not quite sure if that was his point.

Eve begins to laugh, then, and Q joins even though he doesn’t know what exactly they’re laughing about.

A little while later, Eve has dropped off to sleep, dozing against Q’s shoulder, and Q decides, somewhere in the pickled recesses of his brain, that it would be weird to continue cuddling Eve while she is asleep and he is not. He’s not sure if it _is_ weird, but it _feels_ weird; he doesn’t even watch James in his sleep. Much.

Q attempts to gently and gracefully extract himself from the couch and manages neither, instead sort of sliding and rolling onto the floor with a thump. Eve doesn’t wake, though, having had a fair amount of wine, and Q congratulates himself on a successful exit.

He also decides that, as soon as the room stops spinning, he ought to get up and walk around to clear his head.

This seems like a fabulous idea until Q is actually up and walking. He makes it about as far as the hall before it seems like an even more fabulous idea to be sitting down, and Q slumps down on to the floor beside the shoe rack.

He’s fairly certain he can’t get up again. This is his life now.

He lets his head loll to the side, tipsily examining the shoe rack. It doesn’t contain even half of his and James’ shoes (they both have a bit of a clothing problem, the problem being that they never have enough closet space), but it’s got the pairs they wear most regularly. Q’s work shoes are there, recently discarded, as are James’ trainers.

Q frowns. He reaches over unsteadily and picks up the trainers. James loves these trainers. He ordered them specially. He wears them for every workout.

What if James really doesn’t come back and all Q has left are these trainers, with their lovingly scuffed toes and stained laces looping over the tops like sweet, dirty spaghetti?

No. Q shakes his head, and stops when the room swirls around him. No.

James will come home and wear his trainers again if Q has to go out and drag him back himself.

Newly assured, Q falls asleep.

-/-/-

“Q?”

There is a voice. Why is there a voice?

“Q? Are you awake?”

No, he bloody well is not awake, not if his hangover really feels like this.

“Q.” The voice has a hand attached to it, and it’s shaking Q.

Q groans. Then the voice clicks, just moments before it asks: “Why are you hugging my trainers?”

Q squints up at James. “Because you weren’t here, you bastard.”

The angle is a bit wonky and Q’s glasses have gone missing, but it looks like James is smiling. He might also have a black eye. “Terribly sorry. Had to finish the job before I could get in contact,” he says, which will only be an acceptable answer once Q is no longer hungover.

Q attempts to lever himself off the floor and groans again. “Alright, help me up,” he instructs. “I may be sick, but after I’ve brushed my teeth, I demand a proper hug. And maybe a kiss.”

James is definitely smiling. “I think I can do that.”

**Author's Note:**

> Also posted on [Tumblr](https://solarmorrigan.tumblr.com/post/186333790973/light-like-melted-butter-james-bond-00q-day) if that's where you like to be


End file.
